Where have I been?

After two years of silence, I’ve decided it’s time to officially move on. This blog was a great place for me to vent my creative cooking adventures during a challenging time in my life, and I’m planning to leave it here since it still gets a fair amount of hits, and I’m glad if my recipes are helpful to people. But it has become clear that I’m not coming back in any permanent sort of way, and it’s been over 3 years since I posted the recipe for German Chocolate Rolls that inspired me to make this blog in the first place, so I feel like my duty to the world at large is done.

If you want to keep in touch with me, you can sign up for my newsletters here or view the newsletter archives here. I’ve been doing one a month since January of this year and it seems to be working well.

I’ll also update my social media links on my About Page, and I’m always open to questions about cooking and food! I am not an expert, but I’m happy to share whatever help I can in your journey to vegan or vegetarian cooking. Just comment with any Qs you may have, and I’ll respond as soon as I can!

Thank you for being great readers and I wish you all the best.

-Mrs Pine Nut

Vegan Needs MysteryBox GIVEAWAY!!!

GIVEAWAY! 😀 😀

HI Everyone,

Just thought it was time to do a GIVEAWAY for my wonderful fabulous readers and hopefully some new ones as well 🙂 Just wanted to thank you all for reading and supporting my Blog 🙂 Your comments and kindness are what pushes me and inspires me to get up and write everyday 🙂 thank you 😀

This Giveaway Starts TODAY and ends on Saturday OCTOBER 17th.. winners will be announced on Sunday October 18th and Prizes will be sent out the following week.

THE PRIZE

I will be giving away TWO  SURPRISE MYSTERY BOXES!!! full of products ( vegan& cruelty-free)

Mystery Box #1 : will have 7-9 Items in its… makeup, skincare & snacks ( cruelty-free & Vegan)

Mystery Box #2: Will have 5-7 items in it…. Makeup and skincare ( cruelty-free & Vegan)

Why Mystery Boxes??? I just love mystery boxes… its like christmas! you never know what you…

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Vegan MoFo 2015, #18: A Tribute to A Great Lady

18. Honor a human or non-human animal who inspires your veganism.

As a Seventh-day Adventist, I respect Ellen White, the messenger of the Lord. It was this quote from one of her books that inspired me to give up meat for good:

“Often animals are taken to market and sold for food when they are so diseased that their owners fear to keep them longer. And some of the processes of fattening them for market produce disease. Shut away from the light and pure air, breathing the atmosphere of filthy stables, perhaps fattening on decaying food, the entire body soon becomes contaminated with foul matter.

“Animals are often transported long distances and subjected to great suffering in reaching a market. Taken from the green pastures, and traveling for weary miles over the hot, dusty roads, or crowded into filthy cars, feverish and exhausted, often for many hours deprived of food and water, the poor creatures are driven to their death, that human beings may feast on the carcasses.

“In many places fish become so contaminated by the filth on which they feed as to be a cause of disease. This is especially the case where the fish come in contact with the sewage of large cities. The fish that are fed on the contents of the drains may pass into distant waters and may be caught where the water is pure and fresh. Thus when used as food they bring disease and death on those who do not suspect the danger.

“The effects of a flesh diet may not be immediately realized; but this is no evidence that it is not harmful. Few can be made to believe that it is the meat they have eaten which has poisoned their blood and caused their suffering. Many die of diseases wholly due to meat eating, while the real cause is not suspected by themselves or by others.

“The moral evils of a flesh diet are not less marked than are the physical ills. Flesh food is injurious to health, and whatever affects the body has a corresponding effect on the mind and the soul. Think of the cruelty to animals that meat eating involves, and its effect on those who inflict and those who behold it. How it destroys the tenderness with which we should regard these creatures of God!

“The intelligence displayed by many dumb animals approaches so closely to human intelligence that it is a mystery. The animals see and hear and love and fear and suffer. They use their organs far more faithfully than many human beings use theirs. They manifest sympathy and tenderness toward their companions in suffering. Many animals show an affection for those who have charge of them, far superior to the affection shown by some of the human race. They form attachments for man which are not broken without great suffering to them.

“What man with a human heart, who has ever cared for domestic animals, could look into their eyes, so full of confidence and affection, and willingly give them over to the butcher’s knife? How could he devour their flesh as a sweet morsel?”

– From The Ministry of Healing, published 1905, pp314-316

(Photo by Daryl Hewison | Flickr)

Vegan MoFo 2015: The President Is Coming!

15 OMG, Barack Obama is coming over because he knows you make awesome vegan food! What are you going to make?

Wow, that would be quite something if I had *that* much bedazzlement power! 😉 Well, hmm. I’d want to serve him food that’s been a hit with many people and that I’m particularly fond of as well, so I think I’m going to make him chickpea potpie with Brasilian rice on the side.

I’d also make a nice green salad, and for dessert, we’d have homemade chocolate chip ice cream sandwich cookies.

And now I totally want homemade chocolate chip ice cream sandwich cookies, even though I’m freezing at the moment. But I have no chocolate chips. Sadface.

Vegan MoFo 2015: Tour of My Kitchen

13 It’s kitchen tour time!

So, I’ll give you this video that was published… one year ago yesterday. Wow.

Also, I’ll link you to my other kitchen tour posts, since not much has really changed since the latest one.

The first two involve How to Kitchen in a 29′ Trailer, so if you’re in tight quarters, those two may be of interest to you.

Kitchen Tour #1, April 2012

Kitchen Tour #2, October 2012

Kitchen Tour #3, January 2015

Vegan MoFo 2015: My Favourite Cookbook

12 Tell us about your favourite cookbook!

I’m pretty sure that Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar gets more use than any other cookbook in my kitchen. (That link will take you to my cookbook review, which is liberally peppered with pictures.) I’m gradually working my way through the whole book and have made well over half of the cookies in it.

This year, I think I’ve used Isa Does It the most of any of my cookbooks as far as new recipes go. I highly recommend it for its simplicity, accessibility, gorgeous layout, and sheer yum factor.

Vegan MoFo 2015: My Favourite Nutrient

11 Focus on a nutrient.

How about RIBOFLAVIN?

So, I remember as a kid we’d be driving home from shopping and I’d be reading aloud the ingredients on the cat food bag, as one does, and I came to RIBOFLAVIN and I read it “RIBO-FLAAHHHHHVIN”.

Not correct, perhaps, but it’s way more fun to say RIBOFLAHHHHHVIN.

So, I just learned today that riboflavin is another name for vitamin B2. (Let’s face it, I may be an intelligent adult, but I just eat food, and don’t usually pay a ton of attention to the nitty gritty details of nutrients.)

Some top riboflavin sources for a plant-based diet are soybeans, spinach, beet greens, tempeh, crimini mushrooms, asparagus, and almonds.I’d kind of like to talk about almonds. I love almonds. Almond Item #1: Yesterday I went to Grocery Depot and in their 3 for $1 energy bar box, I found these:I am *not*, by any means, a supporter of paleo eating, but being a sucker for anything chocolate-cherry I decided to try them. The first ingredient is almonds, and they are super delicious. (I’m not sure cave men would have used brown rice syrup and evaporated cane syrup to bind together their almonds and sunflower seeds and dried bing cherries, but whatevs.)

Almond Item #2: When I was little almonds were my favourite nut, and I think some friends and I cracked some into a paper cup and then did some sort of high-falutin’ parade through the living room holding high our paper cup full of shelled nuts. And then we ate them.

Almond Item #3: Forms of almond that I do *not* like: almond extract, almond butter.

Almond Item #4: I’m going to link you to a yummy recipe to sugar plums. It calls for honey, but brown rice syrup would be my choice as a sub. The rest of the ingredients are fine. I made them years ago and really liked them, and considering that was before my taste buds readjusted to “weird vegan food”, that’s a pretty good recommendation. 😉

Vegan MoFo 2015: Something Blue

10 Something blue.

Um… well. Blue food calls to mind those gross candies that are radioactively blue and leave your tongue, teeth, and lips disturbingly chilly-hued.

Here’s me in early 2000 sporting blue-lollipop-stained teeth:

and lips:

Yeah. I’ve outgrown those lollies. (And I’ve also graduated from pale blue flannel granny gowns to other kinds of sleepwear.)

But I’ll never outgrow blueberries. One of my favourite recipes calling for blueberries is Baked Oatmeal, and I already mentioned blueberry muffins in my childhood meal post the other day. I have also been known to eat astounding amounts of fresh blueberries, because, well, YUM.

But few things top a good crisp or pie made with blueberries.

Page 260 of my 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook is well-used, well-marked, well-stained. It’s the page that has THE best apple crisp recipe, like, ever.

This is my criterion for a crisp: The fruit needs to be unsweetened and un-spiced, and stand on its own. The topping needs to be the magic layer where the sweet spiciness happens, and there has to be plenty of said topping. So I always double – or at least one-point-five – the crisp part of the recipe.

Here’s my veganised, already-doubled crisp topping based on the Betty Crocker cookbook.

In a bowl, combine:
2/3 c brown sugar
1 c all-purpose flour
1 c rolled oats
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg

Then add:
2/3 c vegan margarine of choice (I use Nucoa)

Using your fingers, crumble the dry ingredients with the margarine until nice and crumbly and evenly mixed.

Heat your oven to 375 and lightly spray a 13×9 pan. Here are the proportions for my favourite crisps.

Blueberry (blackberry, raspberry, other-berry, cherry): 3 cups of fresh or frozen blueberries, sprinkled with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (omit lemon juice with anything other than blueberries)
Apple (pear, nectarine, peach, plum, etc): 4 cups sliced tart fresh apples, arranged in pan neatly

Sprinkle the crumb topping evenly over the fruit and bake for about 30 minutes. The fruit should be bubbling and the crisp should be golden brown. Serve warm with cold nut-or-soy milk. Mmm.

[Footnote: YES, it’s lame that I didn’t, like, MAKE a blueberry crisp to take a photo of for this post, but I don’t HAVE any blueberries at the moment besides dried ones, and I’m lazy, so. Yeah.]

Vegan MoFo 2015, Day 9: Retro Recipe!

9 Most retro recipe.

My first year doing MoFo my theme was “veganise my 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook” (this was before I ever heard of Betty Goes Vegan!) You can read all those posts here.

I’m going to spotlight one of them here, though: the chickpea rice casserole.

This casserole is like… quintessential comfort food to me, and made vegan it’s Adventist comfort food. (Okay, so to make it classically Adventist, it would need to be made with cream of mushroom soup and topped with cheddar cheese, but we don’t use those things in my house. ;-)) It’s super easy to mix up and throw in a crockpot and take to a potluck, and people, I just LOVE IT. It tastes so good. I’ve made it many times since originally posting about it, and I hope you’ll try it too!

[Footnote: With camping this past weekend I was truant on a couple of posts, but I have good intentions to fill out those prompts, even if late! Here’s hoping.]

Vegan MoFo 2015, Day 7: Film-Inspired Food

7 Make / eat some thing inspired by a book or film.

This is your warning. I’m incredibly immature. Read on if you want to, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. 😉

One night, as a child, we had tacos for dinner, as we often did. My dad, for one reason or another, topped all of his taco fixings with a generous blob of refried beans.

“Mike, that looks like barf,” my mom said.

I have such a twisted sense of humour. I used to hate refried beans. Now I took great joy in them, because they looked like barf. Tasty, tasty barf.

All that being said, I just got back from camping late last night, and didn’t have time to recreate anything for this post, but as I made lunch today, the only thing I could think about was a great big bowl full of refried beans to replicate Barf’s summer snack in Spaceballs.

Image from jmbmommy on flickr

I know. I’m so mature*. But I honestly LOVE refried beans because they look like barf. I love them so much I’ll eat them cold out of a can. If I’m not lazy, I’ll warm them up so they actually look like barf, instead of a can shape with ridges.

Mmm.

___

*Search hashtag foodthatlookslikepoop on Instagram. I’ve been threatening to do Fecal Fridays and feature food that looks like poop for some time now. So… yeah.